| Newsgroups & Listservs |
| Newsgroups have little to do with – news. They are electronic discussion boards or bulletin boards. | |
| People must visit (messages do not come by email). | |
| They leave messages or ask questions. |
| Listservs are electronic mailing lists. | |
| The name was trademarked by L-Soft, which developed Listserv software. | |
| Listservs deliver email messages to and from people who have signed up for the list. | |
| The messages can come one at a time or in a one-message digest each day. |
| Newsgroups and listservs are effective research tools. | |
| Researchers can find out trends, tap public opinion, contact experts and make contacts. |
Finding experts through listservs
| To participate in a list, you must first subscribe. | |
| Usually, subscribing is free. Often lists are supervised or moderated. | |
| Because people must register, because the volume of mail can be heavy, listservs usually attract people who are interested in, and know a lot about, the topic: A good place to find experts. |
| Once you have a research topic, you can subscribe to a listserv devoted to the topic. | |
| Messages can teach you more about the topic and put you in touch with experts or people with experience. |
| For example, if you were interested in online news, you could join an online news listserv. | |
| You would get 30-40 messages a day (or one digest with 30-40 messages) from people interested in, or working in, online news. |
| You could “lurk” on the list – observing the discussion without participating. | |
| Or you could pose a question to the group or to individuals through email. |
| Close to 100,00 listservs exist. | |
| A number of web sites organize and categorize listservs so you can search on your topic. | |
| www.liszt.com once was the main site. It now brings you to another good site: www.topica.com | |
| www.tile.net.lists will give you information on specific lists. | |
| www.lsoft.com/catalist.html is the “official” catalog of listserv lists. |
| Internet researchers will not find “news” on newsgroups. | |
| They will find opinions, stories, anecdotes, ideas and people who care a lot about a topic. |
| More than 80,000 newsgroups exist. | |
| The BEST place to find a directory and archives of groups was Deja formerly DejaNews: www.deja.com | |
| Surprise: You will be taken to Google, which recently bought Deja. |
| You can search Google Groups by Usenet categories, such as alt (alternative) or biz ( for business). | |
| Yahoo also has gotten into the groups business, though without the extensive Deja archives bought by Google. |
| Suppose you were doing research on electronic commerce. | |
| You could find a group on biz.e-commerce at Google and subscribe or read past messages. You could search ecommerce at Yahoo groups. | |
| You could get ideas. You could make contacts. |
| For listservs and newsgroups, researchers often find it useful to look back over archives of discussions. | |
| You can often search individual lists by your subject and find everything that has been written by the group. |
| Groups/Google says it offers 20 years of archives with over 700 million messages. | |
| You could go to Groups at Google and read through archives from past months, even years. |
| A great resource for finding experts is Profnet – Professors’ Network. | |
| University professors often are experts in their subject area. Profnet allows you to find them. | |
| By email: profnet@vyne.com | |
| Or the web: www.vyne.com/profnet |
| “Virtual community” is a name sometimes given to lists or groups where people get together and exchange opinions and ideas. | |
| “Community” is used purposefully. People can and do become a community online. | |
| And that community can be a tool for the Internet researcher. |